Road trip to Davenport from St. Louie!

I should actually blog about RAGBRAI before I forget all the fun stuff.  My problem is that I hate my blog right now.  Pretty much because Tony died and I didn't want to ever admit that by writing it down... sort of like a strike on moving forward with my life since I never wanted to live without him. 

But, maybe I can try to write about Iowa since I've at least acknowledged the elephant in the blogroom.

Wow, Iowa was such a life experience!  I expected it to be something that I would always remember and hoped that I might walk away from it feeling accomplished, which I did, but in a whole different way than I ever would have expected.

So, I flew into St. Louis to meet up with Katie.  I had never been there so I was pretty excited to see what the town was like and also of course, to catch a glimpse of the "gateway to the West" - the arch.

We pigged out on sushi and tried to fully appreciate one of our last nights falling asleep on actual beds with air-conditioning.  We got up early and got massages before road-tripping it up Route 66 to Davenport. 

The tri-cities were tiny!  We stayed at a flea bag hotel that night just because it was only one of two hotels in the entire city and the other one was worse.  It was great though because we met a portion of the Pedaling for Parkinsons team there that night and all hung out in the lobby chatting it up and chowing down on some pizza.  It was awesome just being able to experience such a different part of the country.